The criminal aspect of the Beaulieu debacle in Lausanne is over. Neither the Vaud Public Prosecutor’s Office nor the former Beaulieu Foundation have appealed to the Federal Court, Keystone-ATS learned on Tuesday. Prosecuted for more than seven years, the former general secretary of the Beaulieu Foundation, Marc Porchet, had been completely exonerated. Now for the civil aspect.
“The Public Prosecutor’s Office has decided not to appeal to the Federal Court,” indicated its spokesperson Vincent Derouand, without giving any further explanation. The prosecution had requested eight months in prison with a three-year suspended sentence for aggravated unfair management against Mr. Porchet. But as in the first instance, the Court of Appeal of the Cantonal Court acquitted him last April.
According to a certificate from the Federal Court, the former Beaulieu Foundation, now dissolved, did not file an appeal either. The verdict of the Vaud courts thus comes into definitive force and closes the criminal part of the case.
Civil hearings planned
It is therefore now the civil procedure which can begin. Hearings of around 25 witnesses by the Cantonal Heritage Chamber (first instance authority attached to the Lausanne District Court) should begin at the end of January. They should extend until next September.
In his first interview given to a media outlet, at 24 Heures, Marc Porchet affirmed last May that he wanted to claim “hundreds of thousands of francs” of unpaid money lost in the affair. During the two trials, he always said that he had fallen into debt to his relatives to the tune of 700,000 francs, in order to pay all the suppliers and his collaborators.
“We are all there: trying to obtain compensation for the damage caused and having to go through full civil proceedings,” he told Keystone-ATS. Like him, three other agents are demanding “payment of the balance of the work carried out for the Foundation and which has never been paid, the costs incurred, the direct damage and loss of income or compensation, the costs of legal proceedings and lawyers as well as late payment interest,” he specifies.
-Mr. Porchet also demands “reparation for the harm and slander of which he was the subject”.
Exonerated three times
For the record, Marc Porchet was secretary general of the Beaulieu Foundation in Lausanne from 2001 until its financial debacle in 2017. Also boss of the trustee mandated for the operational management of the site, he was suspected of having profited from this double hat to promote his interests and those of loved ones.
He had been specifically accused in a press release from the Vaud Council of State, despite the presumption of innocence, of embezzlement, overbilling, opacity in accounts and conflicts of interest in December 2017 following the filing of a complaint criminal. An amount of 27 million had been articulated. Mr. Porchet was immediately fired after sixteen years in office.
Since then, his innocence has been declared three times: a first classification by the Public Prosecutor’s Office in 2019, an acquittal by the La Côte District Court in August 2023, then confirmed by the Cantonal Court in April 2024.
This article was automatically published. Source: ats
